If you do any (or all!) of these things, please leave separate, additional comments to get credit for each entry.

The deadline this week is a little wonky, too, as I’m going on a short driving trip and then expecting some out-of-town guests. Thus you have until 11 a.m. PDT Thursday, Aug. 6 to enter. If I don’t hear back from the winner by 7 p.m. PDT Friday, Aug. 7, I’ll pull another name.

The photo is a glimpse of harvest mania at Chez DIY. Those underachievers in the small glass dish are strawberries picked from our tiny patch, which we hope to expand in years to come.

In the bowl and large measuring cup are four quarts of raspberries that DF and I picked in an evening, quitting before we’d gotten them all. We’ve already frozen 14 quarts of the things for his oatmeal and my homemade yogurt, and also to eat the Alaska way: only partially thawed and with a big dump of sugar.

On the left are jars of jam I’d made from a previous session; it’s the second batch I’ve made this year. Seeing those jars gives me the urge to make another one.

Not that we need a third batch, or maybe even that second one; we’re still using up jam from last year. But I don’t want the backyard bounty to go to waste — and part of me doesn’t even want to give them away.

That’s the part of me that feels, every year, that primal urge: Winter is coming. Put food by.

Silly, really, since we live about three miles from two supermarkets. But as I noted in “The low-maintenance preppers,” the majority of Alaska’s groceries get barged or flown in. Even a temporary disruption in shipping due to natural disaster or man-made chaos could empty the shelves pretty quickly.

We like having our own store in cupboards, freezer and basement. Although some of it comes in great big bags and bottles from Costco, we’re slowly increasing the amount of local foodstuffs put into bags and jars by our own hands.

Avoiding waste

Thus the jam and the frozen berries, and the seven pints of turnips we recently canned (with a second crop to follow), and the flourishing potato beds and buckets from which we hope to harvest several kinds of spuds (purple, Yukon Gold, German Butterball). The greens from those turnip were chopped and frozen for soups and our traditional New Year’s good-luck dinner.

For weeks we’ve been eating lettuce (including a new variety, red Romaine), spinach and Asian greens but haven’t touched the kale – that’s going into the dehydrator to add nutrition to soups and curries throughout the year to come. Last year DF also dehydrated the tough outer leaves of our red cabbages on the theory that when crumbled up in soups their chewiness wouldn’t matter.

He was right, and we were absurdly pleased not to have wasted a food resource. The cabbage heads got shredded and pickled in quart jars, a sweet/sour side dish that wakes up our palates on cold winter evenings. As noted earlier we’ll can more turnips and hope that our sloooowly growing carrots make enough roots to can as well.

They’ll join quart jars of chicken that we bought at rock-bottom price earlier this year and preserved for future stews and stroganoffs. The Copper River red salmon we were recently given got smoked and frozen. If turkeys get really cheap come November, we’ll probably cut and can them, too.

Food to be savored

Is this paranoid? I don’t think so. Those Costco runs give us staples like flour, beans, rice, sugar and oil at prices much lower than those in the supermarket. The large quantities mean fewer trips to the store – any store – which in turn means less wear and tear on the car and less gasoline expended.

The foods we grow are wonderfully healthy and provide a fine hobby: watching things green, bloom and finally produce things we can eat. Some people paste stamps in albums. We put seeds in soil.

Yesterday we savored the first tomato from the greenhouse DF built (mostly from old wood and scavenged windows). The flavor and texture of that fruit made up for all the nail-banging and water-carrying.

We’d already enjoyed cucumbers from the greenhouse, and were amused to watch his granddaughter eat almost half of a 10-inch-long “Sweet Slice” cuke all by herself. Was it the fact that she’d watched it grow and then got to harvest it herself? Or was it just the startling flavor of a freshly picked fruit, one that wasn’t sprayed with pesticides or herbicides and then picked, waxed and shipped thousands of miles?

A little of both, I think. One of the few good memories I have of my maternal grandfather is the times he walked my siblings and me through his extensive garden. He’d cut a cucumber into slices with his pocketknife and we’d eat it amid the vines, listening to cicadas shrill their sohotsohotsohot scream, the oppressive heat and humidity of a South Jersey summer temporarily allayed by the cool, sweet crispness in our mouths.

The garden-to-table connection

Rose will have memories like that too. Every time she comes over she wants to pick berries or pull a cucumber from the vines, and to irrigate the greenhouse plants with what she calls the “tiny water can.”

That’s not a store-bought watering device but rather a six-ounce tomato paste can, part of whose rim is crimped into a spout. (See “Chez DIY,” above.) DF and I use similar cans except that ours once held 101 ounces of Del Monte Fancy Cut Green Beans. All the cans came from the recycling center.

Filling her tiny water can from one of the several greenhouse buckets gives Rose tremendous enjoyment. I have yet to meet an almost-three-year-old who didn’t like playing in water.

Watching her learn about the miracle of growing food makes us just as happy. We’ve let her pull up a turnip for canning and in a few weeks DF will let her tip over a potato bucket and prospect for some of those Yukon Golds. He’ll immediately cook and serve them, to strengthen that garden-to-table connection.

I know that it’s time for me to stop freezing berries. An hour ago my niece called to ask a question about my pectin-less jam recipe. Since her raspberry patch isn’t as productive as ours I invited her to come over here once she’s cleaned out her own crop. Pretty sure I’ll be seeing her. That primal urge seems to run in our family.

Readers: Do you freeze, can, dry, smoke or pickle anything for the winter?

Some well-known writers (Jodi Picoult, Harlan Coben, S.E. Hinton, John Scalzi, et al.) dove in along with the rest of us lesser-known and unknown scribes. Collectively we whirled and howled about stuff like:

Low pay and no pay

Folks who question why we have to use so many cuss words

The assumption that we’ll never get published, i.e., be “real” writers

People who treat what we do as a hobby

Those who swear they could do this too, if only they had the time

Were we being thin-skinned? Check out a few of the tweets and let me know:

“It’s pretty impressive that you spend so much time on something that has so little chance of success.”

“I downloaded your book for free online. Could you please sign this printout of it?”

“It must be so nice to have time to write. I’d love to give up work too.”

“Writer’s block doesn’t exist. Get on with it.”

“It must be lovely working from home. You can combine your writing with housework and childcare.”

“What’s your backup career plan? I hear your industry is dying.”

Nice, huh?

Tell me something good

I put a few of my own out there, including:

“You have a blog? How nice. My nephew’s 10. He blogs about Minecraft.”

“Want to write for us?” (What’s the pay?) “No pay. But think of the EXPOSURE!” (People *die* of exposure.)

“I want to write for (company that employs you). What’s your editor’s name and e-mail address?”

Thus I was on the lookout at last Wednesday’s Metropolitan Opera’s HD re-broadcast of “The Merry Widow.” This is not an opera about bustiers. In fact, it’s not even an opera, but an operetta – lots of speaking roles but with enough musical numbers to keep an orchestra busy.

It’s pretty fluffy fare: The Paris embassy of the impoverished Grandy Duchy of Pontevedro plans a formal ball and invites the titular widow (played by Renee Fleming), who came into big bucks upon the death of her much-older husband on their wedding night.

Officials are terrified that she’ll marry someone outside their country and take her money with her, which could tip the country into bankruptcy. They scheme to fix her up with the ultra-eligible Count Danilo Danilovitsch. What they don’t know is that the two were once in love but his family forbade the marriage – at that time, Hanna was a country girl without a cent to her name.

Does she still love Danilo? Do you even have to ask? But things aren’t that simple.

After a whole lot of silliness and sub-plotting, there’s a happy ending with a twist. And, to the vigilant, a few money lessons to be learned.

What grownups do

1. Live within your means. The embassy was hemorrhaging money but no one seemed to know how to stanch the bleeding. In fact, they dumped a whole boatload of bucks they didn’t have to throw that big party.

Although “spend less than you earn” is pretty basic advice, too many of us aren’t listening. In fact, some insist on taking the same tack as the embassy “You’ve got to spend money to make money.”

But what happens when you don’t make that money? You’ve still got to pay back what you’ve spent. Which brings us to the next lesson…

2. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. As noted, the operetta’s main focus is money: If the widow takes her money and runs, the economy will collapse.

Are you spending without a care while pinning your future on a promotion, a Prince Charming, an inheritance or, heaven forbid, a lottery ticket? Don’t. Take charge of your finances and work to un-learn any bad money habits.

Lucky or prudent?

3. Beware of hangers-on. Do rich people ever know really, truly, absolutely for-sure who their friends are? As opposed to “people who want to hang out in order to get something from me” or “people who want to associate with me only because I’m rich like them and who would drop me like a bad habit if my finances went south.”

Hanna is aware that some people think her giant bank account is her most attractive feature. She jabs wryly at the many suitors who shower her with attention, and longs for the old flame who genuinely enjoyed her company. While she does throw a sumptuous party for the town, she doesn’t shower gifts on any of those pretty-boy suitors.

I suggest you do the same. If friends want to turn you into their own personal ATM, put your foot down gently but firmly. The same goes for ne’er-do-well relatives who think you should help them because you’re “lucky” enough to have money (i.e., you’ve been prudent about finances).

Instead, give a personal finance book even if you don’t know whether they’ll read it. Or help in ways that don’t involve handing over cash, such as paying an overdue utility bill or buying school shoes for your niece.

4. Get smart about your money. Hanna is aware of all the details of her husband’s will and its effect on her finances. The show’s climax hinges on one of them – a case of dollars ex machina, if you will – and it reveals the true nature of most of her ardent beaux-to-be. (It’s a bit sexist by today’s standards, but then this was written in 1905.)

You should also have a handle on your own finances. How else can you make the right choices? If you don’t feel capable, find a fee-only financial planner to walk you through your options.

No money secrets

5. Merge carefully. Hanna is super-wealthy. Some of her suitors aren’t, and others are accustomed to the finer things in life whether or not they can actually afford them. Gold-digging is gold-digging no matter whether the hands on the shovel are masculine or feminine.

So if you’re planning to marry or move in together, make sure you talk finances first. Advice columns are full of letters that run along these lines:

“S/he said we’d share costs fairly but I’m still carrying most of the financial burden.”

“I had no idea that s/he had so much in consumer and/or student loan debt.”

“Even with two of us earning we can’t seem to save, but s/he doesn’t want to talk or even think about the future.”

Some people opt for financial reveals in the early stages of dating. That may sound cold, but wouldn’t you want to know if your new guy/gal was up to his/her hairline in debt but blithely unconcerned about the obligation? Or that your new sweetie is behind on child support, has declared bankruptcy twice or has never even thought about retirement planning?

Sick of sharing the bathroom, and maybe even a bedroom? Understandable. But the solo life can cost you. The chance to walk around in your underpants and watch whatever you want on Netflix means paying up to 44 percent more for the single life.

That’s why I suggested this as a topic for Money Talks News: “Done with roommates? 48 ways to afford living solo.” Some of those 48 tactics are fairly easy things like researching the rental market, watching for move-in specials and entertaining at home vs. making every occasion an expensive one.

Others are simple, but not easy.

Stuff like sticking to a very careful budget and nixing restaurants and takeout are easy enough in theory but not always fun. Then again, neither is sharing a one-bedroom New York apartment when both you and your roommate have boyfriends. (A woman I know actually did this. Ick.)

As noted, one way to keep more money in your budget is to look for affordable fun. For examples, check my latest on the GO Banking Rates website. “21 free or cheap date ideas” offers some obvious ideas (picnics, gallery openings, free movie screenings) and some not-so-obvious (take the Megabus to a neighboring city for the day, bake and decorate cupcakes and give them all away).

I also contributed to a post on the GBR site, “23 reasons why you will always be poor.” Spoiler alert: My tip has to do with not knowing where your money is going. If you don’t know that, then you won’t be able to plan. You’d be amazed how those casual expenses (a soda, a magazine, coffee with a pal) combine to break the bank.

The tool in question is the credit card, which far too many Gen Xers and Boomers are using with abandon. A new survey from Allianz reveals, among other things, that:

Almost half of both groups think of plastic as “a financial survival tool”

43 percent believe that “lots of smart, hardworking people who are careful with their spending also have a lot of credit card debt

20 percent of Gen Xers and 14 percent of Boomers think going into debt for day-to-day purchases is “just a fact of life”

Anyone but me find this disturbing? Discuss.

‘The walking dead of story topics’

As always, I’m writing about writing. On my writing course blog I’ve got advice both short and long:

“60-second writing tip: Close the dictionary” sounds counterintuitive. Shouldn’t writers know lots and lots of words? But that’s not the point of this quick-hit piece. If you’ve ever been tempted to begin an article with “Webster’s defines (whatever) as (whatever),” please read this post. Please.

“Why writers shouldn’t give up” isn’t necessarily just for writers, since its topic is on persevering through slow or even awful times in your life. In it I admit that at my lowest point I couldn’t really see any kind of future for myself. However, I could not have imagined the life I have right now.

Short form? “You have no idea what might be just around the corner. But if you stop moving forward, that corner will never be reached.”

Luke Landes invited me to the Plutus Awards website for a long Q&A about what I call “the walking dead of story topics – one(s) that you cannot escape and that will never, ever die.” In newspapering we called them “evergreens,” i.e., ones we had to do regularly (state fair, holiday shopping, etc.)

Remember, guys, it’s all new to somebody, and your article on getting out of debt or dealing with a chronic illness might appear exactly when someone needs to read it.

Hear me, hear me

Recently I’ve been featured on two personal finance podcasts, which is something I don’t usually do but apparently something I need to do more often. At least that’s what all the PF kids say.

In the “Over Coffee” podcast, indie broadcaster Dot Cannon and I dish about stuff like how I became a newspaper reporter with no college degree and why I became a professional blogger for MSN Money even thought I didn’t know exactly what a blog was. The result is called “Game-changing the future.” Enjoy.

And (almost) live from his parents’ basement (not really), Stacking Benjamins blogger and podcaster Joe Saul-Sehy and I talked about another topic that even non-writers can use. “7 strategies to avoid burnout” apply to almost any job or life situation. In a culture that seems obsessed with multitasking and 24/7 availability, we are at risk of short- or long-term physical and emotional harm.

Full disclosure: I actually mention “multitasking” as a strategy. What I don’t do is suggest you check e-mail while driving or spend an evening blogging while your partner and/or kids sit there feeling ignored.

When I wrote “Surviving (and thriving) on $12,000 a year” for MSN Money last month, some readers reacted with words like “deprivation” and “hardship.”

Who, me?

I didn’t consider myself deprived, although I could see why some people might think so. I don’t own a laptop*, television, DVD player, stereo, iPod, video-gaming system, Blackberry** or any of the other things marketed as absolute necessities.

But I have food, shelter, family, friends, a radio, a bus pass, a library card and the chance to attend a respected university.*** How could I consider myself “poor” when so many people have nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep and no chance to improve their situations?

Yet there was another reason I hesitated to call myself poor: the cultural baggage associated with the word. Poor people are lazy, stupid, immoral, shameless and incapable of making smart decisions. Poor people are losers; our country loves winners. We want poor people to trade their rags for riches. We want them to embody the American Dream.

Most of all, we want to believe that poor people are shiftless and depraved and always to blame for their poverty. Otherwise, we’d have to face the possibility that some day we, too, could wind up on the business end of the breadline.

Blaming the victims?

I’m not naive enough to think that some people don’t make bad choices. But I’m not mean-spirited enough to believe that poor people are poor only because they’re pathologically incapable of wealth. Lots of them are where they are because of sickness, unemployment, a lack of education, a dearth of opportunities. More than a few of my relatives are among them.

I joked to a cousin that our family has been practicing “how to be poor” all our lives. She agreed. “Poor just is,” she said, “and you don’t question, ‘How?’ You just do it.”

I grew up fairly broke, and stayed that way until my early 20s. Marriage and a career kept me comfortably middle-class for more than two decades. Now, at age 49, I’m a divorced student, and broke again.

Scratch that. I’m not broke. I’m poor. I’m redefining the word so that it will lose its power to harm. Being poor is what my dad would call a “useful life skill.” (He used this phrase when he wanted us to carry cinder blocks or weed the tomato patch.) And I happen to believe it’s a life skill that plenty of Americans could use, saddled as they are with credit-card debt, college-loan debt and mortgage debt. Being “poor” for a while – that is, making a conscious choice to manage money differently – would be good for them.

Here, then, are the rules for How To Be Poor:

Rule 1: Have very little money.

Rule 2: Live on it.

Rule 3: Rule 2 will change your life, if you let it.

Take charge of your life

Being poor means taking a hard look at your needs and getting ruthless about separating them from the “wants.” (I need food. I want steak.)

It means not behaving as though you still have money, because you don’t have money – you have credit cards. Using them to live beyond your means is financial suicide.

Whether you’re in debt because of bad luck or bad choices doesn’t really matter. What matters is taking charge of your situation. As the old saying goes, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

But here’s the good part: once you can afford them again, you may not care if you get them. That’s where Rule 3 comes in.

An attitude of gratitude

My most important money-management tool hasn’t been figuring out how to get more, but rather discovering how little I really need and how much I already have. Sure, I look for practical ways to save. The local electric company has a reduced rate for lower-income users. I cook simple meals that cost practically nothing. I shop loss-leaders and use coupons and rebates; about once a month, I go to the food bank. Yard sales, thrift shops and dollar stores supply most other requirements.****

But how I save money isn’t the point. What’s important is knowing that I have everything I need, and also some of what I want. Although I have never been more broke, more tired or more uncertain about the future, I’ve also never been happier.*****

I’m no Zen master, but I can say that having less makes you that much more grateful for what’s in front of you. I’ve also learned that paring down possessions means a lot more room in your life as well as in your house.

Understand that my days are not a constant trudge of joyless self-denial. I occasionally get a $10 student ticket to the symphony. Usually, I go for cheaper entertainment: a new library book, a free movie preview, pay-what-you-can night at a local theatrical production.

Because school takes up so much of my time, the occasional free evening is often most enjoyably spent on a long hot soak and an early bedtime (i.e. before midnight). These things may not sound exciting to everyone, but they make me happy.

I might not have selected this specific scenario for my life. But now that I have it, I’m going to see what I can learn from it. My hope is that it will make me wiser about what I eventually seek.

True prosperity

Here’s what I’ve already learned: Being poor doesn’t mean not wanting things – it means wanting the right things for the right reasons. When these clothes wear out, I’ll get new ones. In time, I’ll want a new computer for my freelance writing business. Several family members are struggling financially, so I’d like to help them. Certainly I’d love to travel.

Some day I’ll treat myself one of those small-but-mighty bookshelf sound systems****** so that music will fill my apartment with momentous impact. And I want to donate to a couple of education foundations so that others can have the same opportunities I’m getting.

Those are all nice goals, but I can still be happy if I don’t get all (or any) of them. Should I earn a good salary one day, I’ll decide which are most important and make them happen. But it won’t matter if I don’t get a high-paying job, because I know how to be poor: You live as well as you can on what you earn, and look for ways to improve your life.

True prosperity is more than just a healthy bottom line. Being rich wouldn’t necessarily make me happy, or generous. Those two states of mind have nothing to do with your bank balance. There’s a world of difference between poverty and poverty of spirit.

Not that being poor makes me noble. It doesn’t. It just makes me careful. And grateful.

***All on scholarships and grants; no way was I going to graduate in my early 50s with a ton of student loan debt.

****Still do these things except for the reduced utility rate and the food bank. For years I paid extra for my electricity in order to donate to the fund that helped me. Also made many contributions to the food bank.

We’re spending less on back-to-school shopping this year, according to the National Retail Federation: an average of $630.36 per family with kids in K-12. That’s about $39 less than last year.

Almost one in five families are already shopping, both to avoid crowds and to spread out the cost among multiple paychecks.

I’ve got another way for you to stretch your BTS budget: Win the $25 gift card I’m giving away this week.

The card is good at five different stores: Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, Athleta and Piperlime. Spend it all in one place, or go from store to store.

Summer clearance sales are hot and heavy right now, and not all of it is bikinis and flip-flops. Khakis, short-sleeved shirts and the like can be worn in September (and maybe longer, if you live in a warm place).

Don’t have kids? Spend it on yourself! Or do a little early holiday shopping. Or sell the card on a discounted gift card site and pocket the cash; right now this gift card is going for up to 80 percent of face value, i.e., an extra $20 in your pocket.

Some habits that I consider opulent would make other people sneer. To each her own, I suppose. Myself, I happen to think taking a long, hot bath with a good book in (dry) hand is a tremendous luxury – especially if there’s a glass of iced tea or a Diet Coke handy.

(Hint: Even if the soft drink is already cold, put it in the freezer for 15 minutes or so before you run the bath. The contrast of the hot-as-you-can-stand water and the icy beverage is delightful.)

Hanging our laundry to dry in the sun leads to another luxury: falling asleep surrounded by the fragrance of the sun and the wind. Some people would say the sun has no odor. I beg to differ.

DF and I sometimes joke about being “frugal sybarites.” The fact is, a sumptuous lifestyle doesn’t necessarily require a lot of dollar signs.

For example, those hot soaks aren’t terribly expensive but it does cost you to empty and then refill the water heater and bring the new agua up to temperature. If I were on a super-tight budget then I’d do navy showers most of the time just to be able to have an occasional soak.

Ditto our sauna, which DF built in the basement ages ago: It’s definitely an energy suck. We don’t use it every night, or even all that often. When we do, it’s sheer delight: steady, baking heat that relieves pain and relaxes you utterly. Moving from the sauna to a shower to a bed full of air-dried linens? Utter bliss.

Nature’s air freshener

Incidentally, we put the linens out year-round, whether that’s after laundering and just for a good dose of fresh air. Our pillows and comforter smell so nice after a spell outdoors.

And if you live in a condo that forbids clotheslines? Drape the linens across a table or a few chairs just below the level of your balcony railing. What the board members can’t see can’t hurt them.

We want the indoors to smell just as nice, so even in the winter we’ve been known to fling open the windows briefly. Just a few minutes’ worth of fresh air makes a startling difference. (Due to pollen issues we don’t open them in the spring before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m.)

On sunny, breezy winter days the sheets sometimes do dry outside. On dark and still days we put freshly washed linens (and other clothing) on drying racks near our fireplace insert. The fires usually get started around 5 p.m., and by morning most or all of the laundry is dry.

Watching the fire movie

That insert is another huge winter treat. It’s a treat at any time, actually; we ran a fire as late as early June. We felt a little rueful but the heat was greatly appreciated since it was a rainy day with temps in the low 40s. Beats turning on the regular heat, I guess.

The fireplace fuel comes from cut-downs in our yard and the yards of others. We did have to spend about a hundred bucks on the wood-splitter rental, but that was worth every penny. DF and I spend many hours sitting near it to read, write or just “watch the fire movie,” as my great-nephew puts it.

Speaking of reading: Books are a tremendous pleasure, and any frugal sybarite worth the title will have a library card. Publishers mail books to me due to my line of work, and we also get them from thrift stores and also a used books emporium called Title Wave. At the latter we trade books in; currently we have more than $200 worth of credit.

Some people go for book clubs. Here’s a frugal workaround:

Lend your favorites to a friend or friends.

Invite that person/several people over to talk about the read.

Make it a potluck or a “bring your favorite snack/appetizer” event. Bonus fun points if the potluck/snacks reflect the book in some way, e.g., Mexican food for the marvelous novel “Kissing the Virgin’s Mouth.”

Prepared and shared with love

Here’s another thing a frugal sybarite knows: If it works, don’t fix it. Our baking pans are somewhat discolored and have a few dents or scratches here and there. Homemade yogurt cooks in an old soufflé dish set atop a warming tray. My bathrobe is a bit pill-y from long wear and washing.

That food is both affordable and healthy as well as delicious. Tactics like the boiling bag, buying flour and yeast at Costco for homemade bread and rolls, the condiment hack, dried beans bought in bulk and a fondness for using (and re-inventing) leftovers keep the tabletop interesting. A bowl of greens from our garden followed by a dish of homemade soup makes a masterful meal – especially since, as DF puts it, they’re prepared and shared with love.

About that sharing: We don’t gulp our food down in order to get back to the Internet or, heaven forbid, check e-mail/send texts while we’re eating. We use mealtimes to reconnect rather than letting technology distract us from our food, or from each other.

Sweet habits

We generally make our own treats, too. Why pay $5 for a cupcake when the same five bucks will pay for ingredients for some very indulgent delights?

Lately DF has been on a peanut-brittle kick – as in, he gets such a kick out of sharing it as well as eating it. His mom is a big fan and so are my nephews (maybe it should be on the menu at Café Awesome), my friend Linda B. and my tax guy.

This morning I woke up to the smell of cookies, which didn’t surprise me. DF has decided he wants the house to smell delicious any time his granddaughter comes over, because he remembers the good-food aromas at his grandmother’s house. Turns out he’d made two kinds: regular oatmeal cookies with mini-chocolate chips plus a separate batch to which he added cinnamon, ginger and cayenne.

The result is so good that I had to tear myself away from the kitchen. The tingle and burn of spices along with the sweetness of the chocolate and oats were an indescribably good combo. (DF calls them “Hot Scots.”) I told him he should enter the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

The National Popcorn Board has some astounding recipes that turn the ordinary kernel into a sophisticated snack. These treats can also be paired with movies, such as Masala Corn with a Bollywood musical. It doesn’t get much cheaper than popcorn.

Treats need not break the budget, or your diet. Use money from the “entertainment” section of your budget and have a few friends over to bake and decorate cupcakes (then send them home with the goodies). Bake a batch of cookies with friends (or your kids, or by yourself) and deliver most of them – along with a “thank you!” note – to a fire station or the teachers’ break room at your neighborhood school.

How do you define ‘fun’?

Speaking of entertainment: A frugal sybarite may define “fun” differently than others. (See “fire movie,” above.) Reading, gardening, taking walks, gallery openings, a nephew’s school concert and a round of cribbage are some of the ways that DF and I stay amused.

Not that we always stay home. I review theater from time to time, which means two free tickets plus a $75 paycheck, and I’ve also started reviewing restaurants. Tonight we’re going to the movies: the Metropolitan Opera’s HD rebroadcast of “La Fille du Regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment).” But we’re getting 20 percent off by paying with discounted gift cards and DF is invoking the movie theater’s senior rate. Since the Met tickets cost something like $25, the dual discounts make a big difference.

Oh, and if a whole bunch of you want to attend the same show? Call in advance and request a group discount. Some theater companies do offer such price breaks and/or discounts for seniors and students.

Or how about an old-fashioned Sunday drive? If you can afford a few extra gallons of gas, this can be a delightful change of pace. We did this a few days ago because DF was concerned that I’d been stuck in the house and a little too work-focused lately. Also because it’s summer and we need to look at it from someplace other than our own yard.

As always, the drive revived. Cruising along on a warm, sunny day during which blue skies form a perfect backdrop for mountains and a perfect complement for Turnagain Arm, I thought of the people who work and save for years (or decades) to be able to spend one or two weeks in Alaska.

We get to live here. Blessed!

Readers: What kinds of inexpensive luxuries/indulgences make you happy?